Mean Girls

2/20/2012 2:01 PM Eastern

By: By Janice Rhoshalle

Love it, hate it — or love to hate it — realitytelevision is a popular staple of American entertainment. Not only arereality shows a form of programming that’s less expensive than scriptedcomedies and dramatic fare, they also bring in significant ratings forcable programmers, particularly among those who watch television themost: women and girls.

Women love seeing other women in leading roles on television. It’s validating.And while nonscripted shows have put more women on televisionthan ever before, the gap between the women in reality TV and women inreal life is huge, and growing.

Despite the increased political and business clout of women inthe real world, images of cat-fighting reality television stars and lipplumpedHousewives present an unrealistic — and decidedly unfavorable— image of women and of what women value, according towriter Jessica Bennett of The Daily Beast.

ANOTHER WORLD

Jennifer L. Pozner, author of Reality Bites Back: The Troubling TruthAbout Guilty Pleasure TV, notes that the “representations in reality televisionare more dangerous than in most other forms of media.”

As the executive director of Women in Media & News, a New York-basedmedia analysis, education and advocacy group, Pozner contends that realityshows perpetuate “1950s ideas set to a contemporary soundtrack.”

“Over the last 12 years, reality TV has presented themost regressive ideas about who women are, and whilewomen in the world are making vast progress — youhave Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin running for presidentand vice president in 2008 — what did we see on realitytelevision?” Pozner said. “Real Housewives, and allthey want to do toss back martinis and yell at each otherand compete over men and beauty and $50,000 earringsfor product-placement ads.”

But strip away all the distracting details about eachshow — whether it’s brides-to-be on TLC’s Say Yes tothe Dress or WE tv’s Bridezillas; the competition of TopChef on Bravo or Project Runway on Lifetime; the livesand styles of the nouveau riche and newly famous ofStyle’s Big, Rich Texas, VH1’s Love & Hip Hop or BasketballWives; or any of the Real Housewives shows — andwhat you’re left with is something very familiar in scriptedTV: a soap opera.

“All you’d have to do is look at a scripted soap operaand look at these reality shows, and all the elements havebeen recreated — without actors,” Eric Deggans, TV andmedia critic for the Tampa Bay Times, said. Deggans iscurrently writing a book about TV, race and social issues.

Rarely, if ever, do viewers see these real women in reality TV shows worryingabout paying bills, Deggans said. They may work, but they never appearconcerned about holding down a job. They have great clothes. Theyeat in the finest places. They vacation in the best locales. Their husbandsare famous. And yet they’re constantly clashing with one another; fighting,divorcing or hooking up with someone they shouldn’t. “There’s sexand anger and emotion in the middle of all that,” Deggans said.

It’s not surprising then that girls who regularly view reality TV acceptand except a higher level of drama, aggression and bullying in their ownlives, according to a recent study by the Girl Scout Research Institute.

The study found that a vast majority of girls think reality shows “oftenpit girls against each other to make the show more exciting” (86%). The GirlScouts study also found that girls believe that their value is based on theirphysical beauty (rather than their personality), that gossiping and competitionare normal parts of relationships between girls and that happinessis dependent on having a boyfriend or significant other.

“There were mean girls before reality TV,” Sally Ann Salsano, executiveproducer of the MTV hit Jersey Shore, said. “Even when I was a kid, therewas competition on the soccer team, in the dance class. But now there’s ashow like Dance Moms (on Lifetime) that’s showing you what’s really happeningin a dance school in Long Island. I just think it’s more relatable nowon TV, like making a documentary; following people doing what they do,and if America wants to watch it, then that’s up to America. ”

Americans have been in a long-running loveaffair with reality TV. It began back in 1973,when more than 10 million viewers tuned into watch An American Family, the PBS documentaryseries said to be one of the earliestexamples of the genre.

The 12-episode series intended to revealthe lives of an ordinary family, but quickly becamethe subject of water-cooler discussion —and a headline feature in The New York Times— as it documented the break-up and subsequentdivorce of parents Bill and Pat Loud.

A generation later, MTV’s 1992 docu-soapThe Real World — in which seven diverseyoung strangers were cast to live together ina SoHo apartment — changed everything,spawning a new viable format in televisionprogramming.

“It was a docu-style look at a social experimentand an unfi ltered take on what it’s liketo have a bunch of kids come together andshare their different world views and differentlife experiences,” MTV programminghead David Janollari said of the series that,after 27 seasons, is still going strong.

“Reality, throughout the last couple ofdecades, has certainly undergone somebroadening and some expansion across thetelevision landscape, and I believe that it willcontinue to evolve,” Janollari said.

WHY WOMEN WATCH

At NBCUniversal, parent company of Bravo,E!, Oxygen and Style, understanding whywomen watch, and how the company canevolve with their diverse female audiences,was the subject of a 2011 study last summerwhich revealed 14 themes — called “needstates”by NBCU — that motivate viewershipamong women.

“What this work was about specifically wasnot understanding the topics that are importantto people, but more understanding what werethe underlying emotionalbenefits of differentshows that wereassociated with hitshows,” executive vicepresident of NBCUniversalEntertainment,Digital Networks andIntegrated Media TonyCardinale, who led thestudy, said.

One key finding:Women attach themselvesto shows thatare both aspirationaland relatable. “Wecall it ‘Me Plus,’ whichis sort of a take meaway scenario that’sa little different fromtheir own lives butsomething the viewercan relate to, andthat’s at the core driverof ratings for a lot ofshows in our space,”Cardinale said.

“We don’t have any dramas with predominantlyAfrican-American casts, and all thecomedies featuring predominately African-Americans have been relegated to basic cable,”Madden Toby said. “So if it’s not a TylerPerry comedy on TBS or a BET comedy that’sbeen rescued from The CW, then it’s reality.”

Were there alternatives — in which imagesof African-American women were moreprevalent in a diversity of roles — then realityshows wouldn’t be so polarizing, CherieSaunders, editor of online newsmagazine theElectronic Urban Report, said.

“These shows bill themselves around theamount of conflict that they can show perepisode, and it seems like the fights andthe riffs between the women are the sellingpoints of the shows,” she said.

THE LIVES OF WOMEN ON TV: SCRIPTED AND UNSCRIPTED

How different are images of women in scripted vs. reality TV? The logline descriptions from the list of TV Guide’s most popular shows oncable and broadcast featuring female leads reveal much about thelives and aspirations of women on television.

Scripted TV

A forensic anthropologist inWashington D.C. (Bones)

Two Southern California suburbanhousewives (Modern Family)

A band of Seattle-based surgeons(Grey’s Anatomy)

A quirky L.A. school teacher livingwith three single guys (New Girl)

A telepathic waitress fromLouisiana with a soft spot for avampire (True Blood)

Reality TV

A single woman searches forlove among 25 male contestants(The Bachelorette)

A New York City bartender, aChilean born-New Yorker adoptedby an Italian family, and her longtimefriend become housemateswith five guys at the Jersey Shore(Jersey Shore)

Each season, 25 womencompete for the heart of one guy(The Bachelor)

The private life of twentysomethingL.A. socialite KimKardashian (Keeping up with theKardashians)

Kim Kardashian’s sisters and their antics in the Big Apple (Kourtneyand Kim Take New York)